‘With the shopping centre running along the esplanade behind the cove, is that right?’
He pointed to the wide drive along the bay side, Christmas decorations already flapping in the wind.
‘There’s actually a larger, modern shopping mall down behind this hill,’ Jo told him. ‘You just drive up here and turn right instead of left. We’re going the other way because the best cafés are on the front and the hospital is also down there. Until the surfing craze started, the cove beach was the one everyone used. It’s only been in relatively recent years that the open beach has become popular and land along it has been developed for housing.’
Explaining too much?
Telling him stuff he didn’t need to know?
Yes to both but Jo felt so uncomfortable with the stranger in her car, she knew the silence would prickle her skin if she didn’t fill it with talk.
‘Can we eat before we visit the hospital?’ her passenger asked, and although there was nothing in his voice to give him away, memories of her own surfing days came rushing back to Jo. When the surf was running, food had been the last thing on her mind, so she’d return home close to lunchtime, starving.
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t had breakfast?’ she wailed. ‘I realised you’d come straight from the beach but … ‘
She turned so she could see his face.
‘You should have said,’ she told him, mortified that she’d been proudly pointing out up-to-date equipment while all he wanted was something to eat. ‘I could have offered you food at the house—cereal or toast or something. It was just so late in the morning I didn’t think of it. Or we could have gone straight to the café instead of doing the clinic tour first.’
She’d turned her attention back to the road but heard the smile in his voice when he replied.
‘Hey, don’t go beating yourself up about it. I’m a big boy. I can look after myself.’
‘Hardly a boy!’ Jo snapped, contrarily angry now, although it wasn’t her fault the man was starving.
She pulled up opposite her favourite café, a place she and Jill had hung out in during their early high-school days.
‘They do an all-day big breakfast I can recommend,’ she told Cam, before dropping down out of the car and crossing the road, assuming he would follow. As she heard his door shut, she used the remote lock and heard the ping as the car was secured.
‘A big breakfast will hit the spot,’ Cam declared as he studied the blackboard menu and realised that the combination of eggs, bacon, sausages, tomato, beans and toast was just what he needed to fill the aching void in his stomach.
If only other voids in other parts of him could be filled as easily …
‘I’ll have a toasted cheese and—’
‘Tomato sandwich and a latte,’ the young girl who’d come to take their orders finished.
‘One day I’ll order something different,’ Jo warned her, and the girl laughed as she turned to Cam.
‘The sky will turn green the day Jo changes her order,’ she said. ‘And for you?’
He ordered the big breakfast, absolutely famished now he’d started thinking about food and how long it had been since he’d eaten. He looked out across the road at the people gathered on the beach, and beyond them to where maybe a dozen surfers sat on their boards, waiting for a wave that might never come.
He understood their patience. It wasn’t for the waves that he surfed, or not entirely. He surfed to clear his head—to help to banish the sights and sounds of war that disturbed his nights and haunted his days.
He surfed to heal himself, or so he hoped.
‘The surf was far better this morning,’ he said, turning his mind from things he couldn’t control and his attention back to his companion.
‘Higher tide and an offshore breeze. Now the wind’s stronger from the west and flattening the surf but those kids will sit out there anyway. They don’t mind if there are no waves, and now they’re all pretty good about wearing sun protection it’s a healthy lifestyle for them.’
She spoke in a detached manner, as if her mind was on something else. Intriguing, that’s what his new boss was, especially as she’d been frowning as she’d explained surf conditions in Crystal Bay—surely not bothersome information.
‘So why the frown?’ Yes, he was intrigued.
‘What frown?’
‘You’ve been frowning since the girl took our order,’ he pointed out.
A half-embarrassed smile slid across his new boss’s lips, which she twisted slightly before answering.
‘If you must know, I was thinking how predictable I’ve become, or maybe how boring I am that I don’t bother thinking of something different to have for lunch. This place does great salads, but do I order a roast pumpkin, feta and pine-nut concoction? No, just boring old toasted cheese and tomato. I’ve got to get a life!’
Cam chuckled at the despair in her voice.
‘I wouldn’t think ordering the same thing for lunch every day prohibits you from having a life.’
Fire flashed in her eyes again and he found himself enjoying the fact that he could stir her, not necessarily stir her to anger, but at least fire some spark in the woman who was … different in some way?
No, intriguing was the only word.
‘Of course it doesn’t, and if my life wasn’t so full I wouldn’t need to employ another doctor, but the cheese and tomato is a symbol, that’s all.’
Small-scale glare—about a four.
‘A symbol? Cheese and tomato—toasted—a symbol?’
Now the eyes darkened, narrowed.
‘You know very well what I mean. It’s not the cheese and tomato, it’s the repetition thing. We get stuck in a groove—well, not you obviously or you wouldn’t be wandering along the coast in a psychedelic van, but me, I’m stuck in a groove.’
‘With a cheese and tomato sandwich, most uncomfortable,’ he teased, and saw the anger flare before she cooled it with a reluctant grimace and a head shake.
‘It’s all very well for you to mock,’ she told him sternly. ‘You’ve been off seeing the world with the army. You don’t know what it’s like to be stuck in a small town.’
She hesitated, frowning again, before adding, ‘That came out sounding as if I resented being here, which I don’t. I love the Cove, love living here, love working here—so stuck is the wrong word. It’s just that I think maybe people in small towns are more likely to slip into grooves than people in big cities.’
He had to laugh.
‘Lady, you don’t know nothin’ about grooves until you’ve been in the army. Everyone in the army has a groove. It’s the only way a thing that big can work. Hence the psychedelic van you mentioned—that’s my way of getting out of my particular groove.’
And away from the memories …
Jo studied the man who’d made the joking remark and saw the truth behind it in the bruised shadows under his eyes and the lines that strain, not age, had drawn on his cheeks. She had an uncomfortable urge to touch him, to rest her hand on his arm where it lay on the table, just for a moment, a touch to say she understood his need to escape so much reality.
He’s not staying!
The reminder echoed around inside her head and she kept her hands to herself, smiling as their meals